He had not been noticed, but his game was spoilt. He came round to the front steps and wished her politely a good-evening. Her surprise once over and explanations made, she asked him, cordially enough, to stay to dinner. ‘Lettice, I know, would like it. You must be tired out. She did not expect you back so soon; but she would never forgive me if I let you go after them.’
Tom heard the words as in a dream, and answered also in a dream — a dream of astonishment, vexation, disappointment, none of them concealed. His uneasiness returned in an acute, intensified form. For he learned that they were bivouacking on the Nile to see the sunrise. Tony had, after all, not gone to Cairo; de Lorne and Lady Sybil accompanied them. It was the picnic they had planned together against his return. ‘Lettice wrote,’ Mrs. Haughstone mentioned, ‘but the letter must have missed you. I warned her you’d be disappointed — if you knew.’
‘So Tony didn’t go to Cairo after all?’ Tom asked again. His voice sounded thin, less volume in it than usual. That ‘if you knew’ dropped something of sudden anguish in his heart.
‘His friends put him off at the last moment — illness, he said, or something.’ Mrs. Haughstone repeated the invitation to dine and make himself at home. ‘I’m positive my cousin would like you to,’ she added with a certain emphasis.
Tom thanked her. He had the impression there was something on her mind. ‘I think I’ll go after them,’ he repeated, ‘if you’ll tell me exactly where they’ve gone.’ He stammered a little. ‘It would be rather a lark, I thought, to surprise them.’ What foolish, what inadequate words!
‘Just as you like, of course. But I’m sure she’s quite safe,’ was the bland reply. ‘Mr. Winslowe will look after her.’
‘Oh, rather,’ replied Tom; ‘but it would be good fun — rather a joke, you know — to creep upon them unawares,’ — and then was surprised and sorry that he said it. ‘Have they gone very far?’ he asked, fumbling for his cigarettes.
He learned that they had left after luncheon, taking with them all necessary paraphernalia for the night. There were feelings in him that he could not understand quite as he heard it. But only one thing was clear to him — he wished to be quickly, instantly, where Lettice was. It was comprehensible. Mrs. Haughstone understood and helped him. ‘I’ll send Mohammed to get you a boatman, as you seem quite determined,’ she said, ringing the bell: ‘you can get there in an hour’s ride. I couldn’t go,’ she added, ‘I really felt too tired. Mr. Winslowe was here for lunch, and he exhausted us all with laughing so that I felt I’d had enough. Besides, the sun — —’
‘They all lunched here too?’ asked Tom.
‘Mr. Winslowe only,’ she mentioned, ‘but he was a host in himself. It quite exhausted me — —’
‘Tony can be frightfully amusing, can’t he, when he likes?’ said Tom. Her repetition of ‘exhausted’ annoyed him furiously for some reason.
He saw her hesitate then: she began to speak, but stopped herself; there was a curious expression in her face, almost of anxiety, he fancied. He felt the kindness in her. She was distressed. And an impulse, whence he knew not, rose in him to make her talk, but before he could find a suitable way of beginning, she said with a kind of relief in her tone and manner: ‘I’m glad you’re back again, Mr. Kelverdon.’ She looked significantly at him. ‘Your influence is so steadying, if you don’t mind my saying so.’ She gave an awkward little laugh, half of apology, half of shyness, or of what passed with her for shyness. ‘This climate — upsets some of us. It does something to the blood, I’m sure — —’
‘You feel anxious about — anything in particular?’ Tom asked, with a sinking heart. At any other time he would have laughed.
Mrs. Haughstone shrugged her shoulders and sighed. She spoke with an effort apparently, as though doubtful how much she ought to say. ‘My cousin, after all, is — in a sense, at least — a married woman,’ was the reply, while Tom remembered that she had said the same thing once before. ‘And all men are not as careful for her reputation, perhaps, as you are.’ She mentioned the names of various people in Luxor, and left the impression that there was considerable gossip in the air. Tom disliked exceedingly the things she said and the way she said them, but felt unable to prevent her. He was angry with himself for listening, yet felt it beyond him to change the conversation. He both longed to hear every word, and at the same time dreaded it unspeakably. If only the boat would give him quickly an excuse.… He therefore heard her to the end concerning the unwisdom of Madame Jaretzka in her careless refusal to be more circumspect, even — Mrs. Haughstone feared — to the point of compromising herself. With whom? Why, with Mr. Winslowe, of course. Hadn’t he noticed it? No! Well, of course there was no harm in it, but it was a mistake, she felt, to be seen about always with the same man. He called, too, at such unusual hours.…
And each word she uttered seemed to Tom exactly what he had expected her to utter, entering his mind as a keenly poisoned shaft. Something already prepared in him leaped swiftly to understanding; only too well he grasped her meaning. The excitement in him passed into a feverishness that was painful.
For a long time he merely stood and listened, gazing across the river but seeing nothing. He said no word. His impatience was difficult to conceal, yet he concealed it.
‘Couldn’t you give her a hint perhaps?’ continued the other, as they waited on the steps together, watching the preparations for the boat below. She spoke with an assumed carelessness that was really a disguised emphasis. ‘She would take it from you, I’m sure. She means no harm; there is no harm. We all know that. She told me herself it was only a boy and girl affair. Still — —’
‘She said that?’ asked Tom. His tone was calm, even to indifference, but his eyes, had she looked round, must certainly have betrayed him. Luckily she kept her gaze upon the moon-lit river. She drew her knitted shawl more closely round her. The cold air from the desert touched them both. Tom shivered.
‘Oh, before you came out, that was,’ she mentioned; and each word was a separate stab in the centre of his heart. After a pause she went on: ‘So you might say a little word to be more careful, if you saw your way. Mr. Winslowe, you see, is a poor guide just now: he has so completely lost his head. He’s very impressionable — and very selfish — I think.’
Tom was aware that he braced himself. Various emotions clashed within him. He knew a dozen different pains, all equally piercing. It angered him, besides, to hear Lettice spoken of in this slighting manner, for the inference was unavoidable. But there hid below his anger a deep, dull bitterness that tried angrily to raise its head. Something very ugly, very fierce moved with it. He crushed it back.… A feeling of hot shame flamed to his cheeks.
‘I should feel it an impertinence, Mrs. Haughstone,’ he stammered at length, yet confident that he concealed his inner turmoil. ‘Your cousin — I mean, all that she does is quite beyond reproach.’
Her answer staggered him like a blow between the eyes.
‘Mr. Kelverdon — on the contrary. My cousin doesn’t realise quite, I’m sure — that she may cause him suffering. She won’t listen to me, but you could do it. You touch the mother in her.’
It was a merciless, keen shaft — these last six words. The sudden truth of them turned him into ice. He touched only the mother in her: the woman — but the thought plunged out of sight, smothered instantly as by a granite slab he set upon it. The actual thought was smothered, yes, but the feeling struggled horribly for breath; and another inference, more deadly than the first, stole with a freezing touch upon his soul.
He turned round quietly and looked at his companion. ‘By Jove,’ he said, with a laugh he believed was admirably natural, ‘I believe you’re right. I’ll give her a little hint — for Tony’s sake.’ He moved down the steps. ‘Tony is so — I mean he so easily loses his head. It’s quite absurd.’
But Mrs. Haughstone did not laugh. ‘Think it over,’ she rejoined. ‘You have excellent judgment. You may prevent a little disaster.’ She smiled and shook a
warning finger. And Tom, feigning amusement as best he might, murmured something in agreement and raised his helmet with a playful flourish.
Mohammed, soft of voice and moving like a shadow, called that the boat was ready, and Tom prepared to go. Mrs. Haughstone accompanied him half-way down the steps.
‘You won’t startle them, will you, Mr. Kelverdon?’ she said. ‘Lettice, you know, is rather easily frightened.’ And she laughed a little. ‘It’s Egypt — the dry air — one’s nerves — —’
Tom was already in the boat, where the Arab stood waiting in the moonlight like a ghost.
‘Of course not,’ he called up to her through the still air. But, none the less, he meant to surprise her if he could. Only in his thought the pronoun insisted, somehow, on the plural form.
CHAPTER XIX.
The boat swung out into mid-stream. Behind him the figure of Mrs. Haughstone faded away against the bougainvillæa on the wall; in front, Mohammed’s head and shoulders merged with the opposite bank; beyond, the spectral palms and the shadowy fields of clover slipped into the great body of the moon-fed desert. The desert itself sank down into a hollow that seemed to fling those dark Theban hills upwards — towards the stars.
Everything, as it were, went into its background. Everything, animate and inanimate, rose out of a common ultimate — the Sea. Yet for a moment only. There was this sense of preliminary withdrawal backwards, as for a leap that was to come.…
He, too, felt merged with his own background. In his soul he knew the trouble and tumult of the Wave — gathering for a surging rise to follow.…
For some minutes the sense of his own identity passed from him, and he wondered who he was. ‘Who am I?’ would have been a quite natural question. ‘Let me see; I’m Kelverdon, Tom Kelverdon.’ Of course! Yet he felt that he was another person too. He lost his grip upon his normal modern self a moment, lost hold of the steady, confident personality that was familiar.… The voice of Mohammed broke the singular spell. ‘Shicago, vair’ good donkey. Yis, bes’ donkey in Luxor—’ and Tom remembered that he had a ride of an hour or so before he could reach the Temple of Deir El-Bahri where his friends were bivouacking. He tipped Mohammed as he landed, mounted ‘Chicago,’ and started off impatiently, then ran against little Mohammed coming back for a forgotten — kettle! He laughed. Every third Arab seemed called Mohammed. But he learned exactly where the party was. He sent his own donkey-boy home, and rode on alone across the moon-lit plain.
The wonder of the exquisite night took hold of him, searching his heart beyond all power of language — the strange Egyptian beauty. The ancient wilderness, so calm beneath the stars; the mournful hills that leaped to touch the smoking moon; the perfumed air, the deep old river — each, and all together, exhaled their innermost, essential magic. Over every separate boulder spilt the flood of silver. There were troops of shadows. Among these shadows, beyond the boulders, Isis herself, it seemed, went by with audible footfall on the sand, secretly guiding his advance; Horus, dignified and solemn, with hawk-wings hovering, and fierce, deathless eyes — Horus, too, watched him lest he stumble.…
On all sides he seemed aware of the powerful Egyptian gods, their protective help, their familiar guidance. The deeps within him opened. He had done this thing before.… Even the little details brought the same lost message back to him, as the hoofs of his donkey shuffled through the sand or struck a loose stone aside with metallic clatter. He heard the lizards whistling.…
There were other vaster emblems too, quite close. To the south, a little, the shoulders of the Colossi domed awfully above the flat expanse, and soon he passed the Ramesseum, the moon just entering the stupendous aisles. He saw the silvery shafts beneath the huge square pylons. On all sides lay the welter of prodigious ruins, steeped in a power and beauty that seemed borrowed from the scale of the immeasurable heavens. Egypt laid a great hand upon him, her cold wind brushed his cheeks. He was aware of awfulness, of splendour, of all the immensities. He was in Eternity; life was continuous throughout the ages; there was no death.…
He felt huge wings, and a hawk, disturbed by his passing, flapped silently away to another broken pillar just beyond. He seemed swept forward, the plaything of greater forces than he knew. There was no question of direction, of resistance: the Wave rushed on and he rushed with it. His normal simplicity disappeared in a complexity that bewildered him. Very clear, however, was one thing — courage; that courage due to abandonment of self. He would face whatever came. He needed it. It was inevitable. Yes — this time he would face it without shuffling or disaster.… For he recognised disaster — and was aware of blood.…
Questions asked themselves in long, long whispers, but found no answers. They emerged from that mothering background and returned into it again.… Sometimes he rode alone, but sometimes Lettice rode beside him: Tony joined them.… He felt them driven forward, all three together, obedient to the lift of the same rising wave, urged onwards towards a climax that was lost to sight, and yet familiar. He knew both joy and shrinking, a delicious welcome that it was going to happen, yet a dread of searing pain involved. A great fact lay everywhere about him in the night, but a fact he could not seize completely. All his faculties settled on it, but in vain — they settled on a fragment, while the rest lay free, beyond his reach. Pain, which was a pain at nothing, filled his heart; joy, which was joy without a reason, sang in him. The Wave rose higher, higher… the breath came with difficulty… the wind was icy… there was choking in his throat.…
He noticed the same high excitement in him he had experienced a few nights ago beneath the Karnak pylons — it ended later, he remembered, in the menace of an unutterable loneliness. This excitement was wild with an irresponsible hilarity that had no justification. He felt exalté. The wave, he swinging in the crest of it, was going to break, and he knew the awful thrill upon him before the dizzy, smothering plunge.
The complex of emotions made clear thought impossible. To put two and two together was beyond him. He felt the power that bore him along immensely greater than himself. And one of the smaller, self-asking questions issued from it: ‘Was this what she felt? Was Tony also feeling this? Were all three of them being swept along towards an inevitable climax?’ … This singular notion that none of them could help themselves passed into him.…
And then he realised from the slower pace of the animal beneath him that the path was going uphill. He collected his thoughts and looked about him. The forbidding cliffs that guard the grim Valley of the Kings, the haunted Theban hills, stood up pale yellow against the stars. The big moon, no longer smoking in the earthbound haze, had risen into the clear dominion of the upper sky. And he saw the terraces and columns of the Deir El-Bahri Temple facing him at the level of his eyes.
Nothing bore clearer testimony to the half-unconscious method by which the drama developed itself, to the deliberate yet uncalculated attitude of the actors towards some inevitable fulfilment, than the little scene which Tom’s surprise arrival then discovered. According to the mood of the beholder it could mean much or little, everything or nothing. It was so nicely contrived between concealment and disclosure, and, like much else that happened, seemed balanced exquisitely, if painfully, between guilt and innocence. The point of view of the onlooker could alone decide. At the same time it provided a perfect frame for another picture that later took the stage. The stage seemed set for it exactly. The later picture broke in and used it too. That is to say, two separate pictures, distinct yet interfused, occupied the stage at once.
For Tom, dismounting, and leaving his animal with the donkey-boys some hundred yards away, approached stealthily over the sand and came upon the picnic group before he knew it. He watched them a moment before he announced himself. The scene was some feet below him. He looked down.
Two minutes sooner, he might conceivably have found the party quite differently grouped. Instead, however, his moment of arrival was exactly timed as though to witness a scene set cleverly by the invisible Stage Manager to frame
two similar and yet different incidents.
Tom leaned against a broken column, staring.
Young de Lorne and Lady Sybil, he saw, were carefully admiring the moonlight on the yellow cliffs. Miss de Lorne stooped busily over rugs and basket packages. Her back was turned to Tony and Madame Jaretzka, who were intimately engaged, their faces very close together, in the half-prosaic, half-poetic act of blowing up a gipsy fire of scanty sticks and crumpled paper. The entire picture seemed arranged as though intended to convey a ‘situation.’ And to Tom a situation most certainly was conveyed successfully, though a situation of which the two chief actors — who shall say otherwise? — were possibly unconscious. For in that first moment as he leaned against the column, gazing fixedly, the smoking sticks between them burst into a flare of sudden flame, setting the two faces in a frame of bright red light, and Tom, gazing upon them from a distance of perhaps some twenty yards saw them clearly, yet somehow did not — recognise them. Another picture thrust itself between: he watched a scene that lay deep below him. Through the soft blaze of that Egyptian moonlight, across the silence of that pale Egyptian desert, beneath those old Egyptian stars, there stole upon him some magic which is deathless, though its outer covenants have vanished from the world.… Down, down he sank into the forgotten scenes whence it arose. Smothered in sand, it seemed, he heard the centuries roar past him.…
Collected Works of Algernon Blackwood Page 180